Lost in the Difference
by liuli-xia
Summary: He was pressed suits and Italian cologne and Catholic Mass with his mother and father in the Seventh row every Sunday morning. She was tradition and jasmine and dreams of a prince charming sweeping her off to a foreign land. "No" was not a word he was used to being told. "No" was a word she was used to telling herself. AU for greenschist's OTP Playlist Challenge.
1. Lost in Stereo

I've decided to take up my first fanfic challenge: greenschist's OTP Playlist Challenge. Each chapter will be the name of a song from the playlist.

Enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** Sorry, loves, but I'm not British and my name doesn't start with J.K.

* * *

He was all smoke and grey and every proper bad habit a rich boy should have. He was pressed suits and Italian cologne and Catholic Mass with his mother and father in the Seventh row every Sunday morning. Nothing ever stopped him from getting what he wanted. With a snap of his fingers, everything came to him like flies to honey. "No" was not a word he was used to being told.

She was all glass and blue and everything innocent a good girl should be. She was tradition and jasmine and dreams of a prince charming sweeping her off to a foreign land. She always had to work for what she had. Books were piled on her desk and in her bag, worn from studying on her work break and between classes. "No" was a word she was used to telling herself.

He goes out into the night to lose himself in the crowd, to escape the image he has built of himself. But he can't, thinks h never will. The image, the façade, has become so real to him that, without it, he is like a lost little boy who doesn't know how to start looking for home. He has come to rely on the image so much that he knows he will crumble into nothingness without it. Really, he doesn't even know who he is anymore.

She goes out tonight because she is exhausted, worn down beyond measure. The standards she was raised to fill have turned her into someone she doesn't know, has never known. It's not who she wants to be and she wants to escape, if only for one night. But she doesn't know how to be anything else, anyone else, except who she was taught to be because she never has had a choice. Sometimes, she wonders if she can even be her own person because she feels like a puppet. Honestly, she never knew who she was in the first place.

They are just two lonely people, lost in the stereo of their own lives with no way out, and it hurts so badly that they forget the pain is there.


	2. People Like Us

Here's the second installment. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** Nope. I don't own Draco.

* * *

Dark eyes scan the club and found her, watched her, drank her in. In this place, someone like her was refreshing, like a fresh of clean air in the middle of a smoke-filled room. He saw her long hair as it fell down her back against a pale blue shirt to where is met her modest black skirt that hid long, long legs that ended in dainty black flats. Her face, he couldn't see. She hadn't turned around so he didn't know what she looked like, had no idea of what to expect. Maybe rose red lips turned up in a fake, innocent smile while her eyes would be bright with lust for someone. He wasn't in the mood for that tonight. He sipped his drink, relishing the burn down his throat. He turned his gaze away from her back.

Pink lips were pulled into a barely there expression of apathy, eyes watching, observing, envying. Someone like her didn't belong in a place like this where people were free to choose and enjoy and live because she didn't know how. Midnight eyes fluttered around, nervousness shining as she took in the lights, the sound, the freedom. She turned to leave and saw him, observed him. She saw his black pressed pants beginning where his dark green dress shirt flowed into them, complimenting his mocha skin. Her breath froze for the second she lost control. She forced her legs to take her to the door.

An unfamiliar gaze was there on his back, then gone almost as fast and he turned to see her profile as she walked by. He had been wrong, proven by her innocent pink lips puled into a line topped by dark, dark eyes that seemed to absorb the light, not shine with it. He had been wrong about her and it was refreshing. Then, he registered she was leaving and he couldn't let her go. He paid and left to follow her through the door.

Twists and turns through the crowd got her to the door and she breathed in the outside air as she left the club for a nearby park. It wasn't a place for someone like her. She closed her eyes then opened them to look at the sky. This was her place, where freedom was too far away for her to think that she could ever attain it, where she could let all her feelings roll through her with no one to see and criticize her. Then she recalled her father's ultimatum. She closed her eyes to the sky.

He saw the tear roll down her porcelain cheek. She felt a foreign hand wipe it away. Midnight met chocolate. She had the same eyes he saw in the mirror everyday. He had the eyes she tried to hide from the world. There were no words to be spoken. None could be found. They stood there, merely looking and watching each other.

"My name is Cho."

"Blaise."

Last names didn't matter. Not to broken people like them.


	3. For the Girl

Here's the third piece. Sorry I took so long to get this one out. My family has been going through a lot of hospitalizations and surgeries.

**Disclaimer:** You know the answer

* * *

There were times that he didn't know if he was ahead of her or behind her in life. Not once were they ever on the same page in their... whatever this was. It wasn't a relationship, at least not in name, but he didn't know what else to call it. She didn't call it that so he never said it and it was perhaps the one thing they agreed on in their two months of whatever they were. Then again, he couldn't really talk because he didn't treat it like something that would last. He was used to things not lasting in his life.

He took a drink and met dark, dark eyes over the table. She looked away and he missed the way she looked back at him. The drink slid down his throat, no burn to accompany it this time, and he tried to remember the last time he drank something that wasn't alcoholic in public. He couldn't remember and he didn't really care. Her voice brought him back but he didn't focus in what she was saying. He knew she didn't expect him to. It was easier to just fit into the world's expectations because then he didn't have to fight the losing battle that would be waiting for him.

She stopped and he took her in with his eyes as he remembered the little things that he had gotten from her. Nothing significant but just enough to highlight how different they were. She was a Rolling Stones girl and he had scoffed at her when she told him. Guns & Roses were better in his opinion. That had been the beginning and he knew it would only be a matter of time. The question was there but her answer never was. He wondered what she would say if he asked.

Under the stars, she stared at them with a wistfulness that he didn't understand and wouldn't question. It wasn't who he was and he wasn't willing to break the mold of his life. Instead, he let the silence reign until she broke it. She said she wanted to go to London. They both knew that they couldn't. People like them didn't do things like that, didn't do many things. He offered somewhere different to visit but she didn't answer. He looked down at their hands, close enough to touch but not touching. The stars caught his gaze once more.

He told himself he was doing it for the girl. He knew that was a lie.


	4. Skyscraper

I'm back, everyone. So I'm dedicating this chapter to _**MemoirsofaLostCause**_. To answer your question about Blaise, we aren't going to learn about him till a little bit later in the story. I promise I will reveal how he became who he is now.

**Disclaimer:** I'm broke.

* * *

She was sad eyes, wine lips, and a broken heart in the middle of the night. Her arms were curled on her chest, eyes open wide as she stared at the ceiling while memories drifted through her mind. It'd been eight months. Eight months since they'd met, since they began this whatever-they-were. Eight months till she'd found that she had fallen much too hard for a man like him. Eight months for her to realize that she meant nothing to a man like him. For a girl like her, it was... Well, she didn't really know what it was but it hurt her somewhere inside and she felt the tears threatening to fall.

The arm around her waist tightened as he shifted in his sleep and she wondered who he was dreaming about tonight because she couldn't imagine herself as an inspiration of dreams. The leg curled around her own held her to the bed and she turned her head to gaze at the man beside her. A small, sad smile graced her lips. He'd never see it. She gazed at him, taking in his appearance rather than memorizing the familiar contours of his face. There were no secret kisses, no runs of fingers through his hair or accidental brushes of her fingers on his skin. Not tonight. Not ever.

Gently, softly, she lifted his arm off her body and sat up as it fell to the bed where she had lain, refusing herself another look at his sleeping profile. Slowly, her legs became disentangled from his own and she heard him shift, his body noticing the lack of warmth. A final act of caring, she brought the covers from the end of the bed up over his body, still not looking at his face. From the doorway, she allowed herself a final glance back, still dressed in yesterday's clothes. She whipped her head to face the exit then swiftly shut the door in a quiet click.

In her car, she sat with her back tall and straight. She didn't need him and his bouts with other girls, other women. She didn't need him attempting to subtly change her into his ideal woman, into someone she didn't want to be, instead of accepting whoever she was even though she didn't think she'd ever know who that would be. The woman was telling herself that she didn't need the man four stories above her in the apartment building. She was trying to convince herself that she didn't want him anymore. It didn't take much time, though, for her to believe that she could do better than him.

She finally turned the key in her ignition and drove into the dawn. Her father's ultimatum rang in her head and she bit her lip when she looked in the rearview mirror. Up in the apartment, a fist unconsciously clenched in the sheets.

She kept driving, telling herself that she'd stand as tall as a skyscraper without him.


	5. Runaway

Well, plot bunnies went on a rampage and decided that the plot I had in mind wasn't the one for this story. Said plot bunnies have now rewritten my plot.

**Disclaimer:** Still no change in ownership

* * *

She looked at the spare key in her hand as she leaned against her car, then forced her gaze to the building in front of her. Dainty hand clenched the key and she steeled herself as she felt tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. A part of her supposed that this was a long time in coming, that this was something that she should have expected. But another part of her was wondering if this was even right, if what she was about to do was wrong for them both. She shook her head, ignoring the latter part of her. Those thoughts weren't exactly conducive to her current state of mind.

Checking her car door and satisfied that it was lock, she pushed herself off of it and made her way inside the apartment complex. She ignored the lushness of the building, used to having the knowledge that one room alone was worth four times her own home. A slim digit pressed the elevator call button and moments later, selected her desired floor. The ride upwards had her fingers twitching against each other, nervousness filling her body. A glance at her watch only served as a reminder of what she was missing tonight.

He had invited her to have dinner with his family tonight, the first time in eight months. If she were completely honest with herself, she would have admitted that his request had scared her, had sent her mind reeling and wanting to separate herself from him. The reason for that though was something that was buried so deep in her subconscious that it would more than likely never come to light. The elevator rang as the doors slid open and she stepped out on to his floor, the one she had been to so many times, the one place in the city that she knew like the back of her hand.

Silent steps carried her down the hallway to his penthouse suite and she paused at his doorway, fingers still twiddling in her nervousness. She could still feel the edges of the key pressing into the tender flesh of her palm. Carefully, she unclenched her hand just enough to place the key into the lock. With a turn, she would change everything that had happened. With that one turn of the key, she would make the one choice that would affect her... and him, Blaise.

Eyes closed, she bit her lip and turned the key, forcing away the already developing feelings of regret and guilt. She gently pushed open the door and shut it swiftly, padding through the penthouse apartment to the bedroom. She hesitated before opening the door as memories played through her mind. The closet was her destination as she pushed open the doors only to be met with a new garment bag with a note pinned to it, addressed to her.

She ignored it, pushed it aside and pulled out all her clothes, leaving behind the expensive pieces he had bought for her despite her protests. The left were rest hanging in the closet and she proceeded through the house in a similar manner until there was nothing left to identify her presence by. Finally, she made her way to the bedroom and took one thing to remind herself of him.

As she sat in her car once more, she forced away all the memories she had of him and turned her car to the western sunset. She knew she was a coward for running away. A part of her wondered how long it would take him to notice that she was gone. The other part wondered what he would do when he did notice.


End file.
